Configure your store's purchase flow

How to shape the shopping experience — product grid, cart behavior, coupons, and checkout notes

The Purchase Flow tab under Store Configuration is where you decide how shopping feels on your store — how many products appear per row on the archive, which card style they use, what happens when a shopper clicks Add to Cart, whether shoppers can enter a coupon code at checkout, and whether they can leave a note on their order. A launch-day pass takes 10 minutes; you revisit whenever you change the look and feel of your store.

What is this for?

Purchase Flow is your shopping-experience control panel. Its job is to shape the shopper's path from the product archive down to the Place Order button — layout and sort defaults for the archive, what appears on the single product page, how Add to Cart behaves, and whether the checkout shows an order-notes field. You reach for it when you are tuning conversion, when you have added a batch of new products and want a denser grid, when you want to switch your cart drawer to a full cart page, or when your support team says shoppers keep asking for order notes.

When you save on this screen, the changes are live on the next shopper page load.

Good use cases

Example 1: Denser grid for a big summer catalogue. You have just loaded 24 new products for summer — they join your existing Canvas Tote Bag, Brand Book, T-Shirt, and Sticker Pack. Open Store Configuration → Purchase Flow, set Items Per Page to 24 and Items Per Row to 4, pick Card Style 1 — classic, and save. Reload /products — the archive now loads a full page of 24 items in a 4-across grid, no pagination needed for the main set.

Example 2: Switching the add-to-cart interaction from drawer to toast. Your shoppers keep abandoning the cart drawer without continuing to browse. Switch After Add to Cart from "Open cart drawer" to "Show toast notification" and save. On your next visit, clicking Add to Cart on the Sticker Pack flashes a small "Added to cart" toast in the corner — the shopper stays on the product page and keeps browsing instead of landing in a cart side-panel.

Example 3: Hiding out-of-stock products during a sellout. The Sticker Pack has sold out and you do not want to show it until the restock arrives. Set Show Out-of-Stock to No and save. The Sticker Pack immediately disappears from /products and from its category archive — shoppers with a direct link to /product/coffee-sticker-pack still see the page, but it no longer appears in the grid.

Example 4: Turning off the coupon field during a fixed-price promo. You are running a "30% off everything, no codes needed" week-long sale, and you do not want stacking codes to slip through. Set Enable Coupons to No and save. The coupon code box disappears from /cart and /checkout. Turn it back on after the promo ends — all your existing coupon codes are preserved and work again as soon as the field returns.

Example 5: Adding an order notes field for custom engraving requests. You sell custom-engraved T-Shirts and want shoppers to leave the text they want engraved at checkout time rather than chasing them by email. Set Order Notes Field to Yes and save. Every order that shoppers place from now on can include an "Anything else?" note that your fulfillment team sees on the order detail page.

Example 6: Dropping a related-products strip into a long product page. Your Barista T-Shirt page is already long (gallery, variant picker, description, specs, reviews). You do not want a "You may also like" strip adding another 300px of scroll. Set Show Related Products to No and save. The T-Shirt page now ends at its description; shoppers who reach the end tap Add to Cart rather than drifting into another product.

What NOT to use this for

• Do not use this panel for per-category layout overrides. These settings are store-wide. If you need a "list layout for Books, grid for Apparel" split, you need dedicated category templates — speak to your developer or use the per-category template options if they are available.
• Do not use the Items Per Row setting to fix a broken responsive layout. This is the desktop grid width only; on mobile, products always stack one-per-row regardless. If your mobile layout looks wrong, that is a theme issue, not a Purchase Flow issue.
• Do not disable the order-notes field to "clean up" the checkout unless you are sure you do not need notes. Shoppers who had a question at checkout will now email you or open a support ticket after purchase instead — a small amount of friction at checkout avoids that.
• Do not use this screen to change your store's currency code. Currency is set store-wide by SGEN and is not editable from this panel.

How this connects to other features

• Your store's public archive (/products and each /product_category/<slug>) — the Items Per Page, Items Per Row, Default Layout, Default Sort, Card Style, and Show Out-of-Stock settings all drive what shoppers see here.
• Each product's single page — Show Stock Count and Show Related Products determine two on-page elements.
• The cart — After Add to Cart and Cart Button Behavior drive how the cart opens (drawer, popup, toast, full page).
• Coupons — the Enable Coupons toggle here controls whether the coupon code field renders at cart and checkout. Individual coupon codes live in Store Management → Coupons.
• Each product's edit page — "Show Related Products" here is the store-wide default; individual products can override this per product.

Before you start

• You are signed in to SGEN as an Administrator or Site Owner.
• You have an idea of your target archive density (3 across for large-image brands, 4 or 5 for catalogue-heavy stores).
• If you are changing the cart behavior, have a minute free to test the new flow as a shopper after saving.

Where to go

1. Open the left navigation in your SGEN admin.
2. Click Store Management → Configuration → Purchase Flow (or open /sg-admin/ecommerce/configuration/purchase_flow directly).
3. The Purchase Flow panel loads with all five cards populated from your current settings.

Steps — Browsing (currency position)

1. Pick where the currency symbol appears

The Currency Position dropdown has two choices: Left ($29.99) — the default for US, UK, Canada, and most English-speaking markets; Right (29.99$) — common in many European and Nordic markets.

Steps — Product Listing Display

2-7. Set archive density, layout, sort, card style, and out-of-stock visibility

Items Per Page (1–100), Items Per Row (1–6 desktop), Default Layout (Grid/List), Default Sort (default/newest/price/popularity), Card Style (1/2/3), and Show Out-of-Stock (Yes/No).

Steps — Single Product Page

8-9. Stock count and related products

Show Stock Count (Yes shows "In stock: 12", No shows "In stock"). Show Related Products (Yes shows "You may also like" strip, No hides it).

Steps — Cart Behavior

10-12. Add-to-cart, cart button, coupons

After Add to Cart (Open cart drawer / Open cart popup / Show toast notification / Redirect to cart page). Cart Button Behavior (Dropdown / Drawer / Popup / Redirect to cart page). Enable Coupons (Yes/No — controls whether coupon entry box renders at cart and checkout).

Steps — Checkout Behavior

13. Order Notes Field

Yes shows an "Anything else?" textarea above Place Order on the checkout. The shopper's typed notes appear on the order detail page for your fulfillment team. No hides the textarea.

Save and verify

14. Save all five cards

The Save Changes button in the sticky right-hand column saves all five cards together. A green success message reads Ecommerce configuration has been successfully updated! at the top of the panel.

15. Verify the changes on your public store

Open /products in a private browsing window and confirm the grid density, card style, and Add to Cart behavior match what you picked. Open /cart to verify the coupon field; open /checkout to verify the order-notes field.

What success looks like

• The green Ecommerce configuration has been successfully updated! message appears after you click Save Changes.
• The archive grid density, layout, and sort all match what you set.
• The product card style matches the one you picked.
• The cart drawer/popup/toast/redirect on Add to Cart matches your setting.
• The coupon field appears or disappears per your setting.
• The order-notes field appears or disappears on checkout per your setting.

What to do if it does not work

• My grid still shows 3 columns when I picked 4. Hard-refresh the archive page. Mobile always shows one column regardless.
• I turned off coupons but the coupon box is still there. Hard-refresh /cart and confirm the toggle is set to No.
• Add to Cart now redirects when I wanted the drawer. Confirm After Add to Cart is set to "Open cart drawer" and save again.
• My order notes field is not showing. Confirm Order Notes Field is Yes, save, and reload the checkout in a private browsing window.
• My prices still show the currency on the left after I picked Right. Contact support — this is being addressed.

Next step